Backchannel chatter: Jane Mayer v. Marc Thiessen

Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen smacked Jane Mayer in his recent book defending the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and now the New Yorker’s national security writer is hitting back.

In “Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack,” Thiessen said Mayer exaggerated administration infighting over a speech President Bush was to give defending the interrogations, contending there was “no rival draft,” as Mayer wrote, by anti-torture officials. But in the current issue of the New Yorker, Mayer persuasively deconstructs every case that Thiessen marshals to argue that waterboarding and other methods produced useful intelligence. Speaking of which, the long running investigation of the CIA’s tapes destruction appears to be nearing a close, The Post’s Carrie Johnson and Julie Tate reported late Wednesday.

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